In the regulated period, an election ad has to say who paid for it, spending is capped, and on election day almost all of it has to disappear. Each rule exists because of something that went wrong.
For most of the time, an advertisement is an advertisement. Then an election gets close, and suddenly election advertising has its own set of rules, and people get told off for things that were fine a month earlier.
The rules cluster into three ideas, and once I saw that, they stopped looking fussy.
The first is: say who is talking. An election ad has to carry a promoter statement - the name and address of whoever is responsible for it. That includes posters, pamphlets and paid posts online. The reason is simple. An argument reads completely differently once you know who paid to put it in front of you.
The second is: nobody gets to win by spending. During the regulated period - a set stretch of time before election day - parties and candidates have limits on how much they may spend, and there are rules for other people and groups who campaign too. A limit is an attempt at a fair race. Without one, an election could be settled by whoever has the most money, and everyone would know it.
The third is: election day is quiet. On the day itself, campaigning around voting places and most election advertising has to stop, including online material that has to come down. The idea is that the last thing between you and the ballot paper is your own thinking, not one final push from somebody's campaign.
None of these rules were invented by someone who dislikes advertising. Each one is a response to something that happened - a message with no name on it, a campaign that outspent everyone, a stunt at a voting place.
The hard part now is that a poster stays where you nailed it, and a post does not. Online material can be targeted at some people and not others, which means an ad can be seen by exactly the people it will work on and by nobody who would argue with it. Rules written for pamphlets have to be applied to that.
Question for the reader
Here is the one I find genuinely difficult. Should the rules that apply to a party's advertising also apply to an ordinary person with a big following who posts their opinion for free?
Say yes, and you are limiting what an individual can say about politics. Say no, and a single very popular account can do more than a campaign is allowed to buy.
Where is the line - and is it about money, reach, or intent? Try writing the rule in one sentence. It is harder than it looks.